Patrick O'Donovan (Limerick, Fine Gael)

There has been talk today about the Anglo Irish Bank bonds. The reality is that, thanks to the actions of the last Government, this is sovereign debt. We have a choice as a country: do we stand over our sovereign debt, or do we walk away from it? If we were to walk away from our sovereign debt, where would it leave us? It would leave us in a simple situation: we could not pay nurses or gardaí, and we would not be able to keep the lights on in this building. I do not think the ushers would come in, and the Acting Chairman would probably find something better to do than to sit here listening to me. Sinn Féin and the Technical Group, who have now been joined by their cheerleaders in Fianna Fáil, have never yet come up with a single solitary suggestion about what we should do if we walk away from our sovereign debt. If we walked away from our European and international obligations tomorrow morning, we do not have a single suggestion about what to do, not even from the financial editor of the Sunday Independent - he might not be the financial editor, but he is a columnist who used to come into the House on a regular basis and pontificate that Seán FitzPatrick would be a great candidate for Governor of the Central Bank, or God, or whatever he was running for at the time, and is now saying the Government is not doing what it should be doing.

The public is becoming weary of this as well. Ultimately, they want the Government to take this issue by the scruff of the neck.

They want credible politicians to negotiate on behalf of Ireland at a European and international level. They have no wish for this will-o'-the-wisp or Alice in Wonderland economics whereby one bangs the table and declares one will not pay back what one owes and will walk away in the hope that everything will be rosy in the garden. The public is not stupid. People know that if they go to their local credit union and borrow €300, unless the credit union agrees to write down that debt, it must be paid in full. At the moment we are in negotiation to try to get our debt written down.

It is unfortunate that every time we come in here we listens to the same old drone that we should not pay this that or the other. Those who suggest this do not provide an alternative. It would be far more constructive for the Opposition to take the initiative and the invitation offered to them by the Taoiseach and the Minister for Finance to come up with ways in which this can be done and to use their relationships in the European Union, although limited, to influence their colleagues. I am unsure whether any of their colleagues are in Government anywhere - perhaps there might be one in Government in Libya - but perhaps they could influence their colleagues to do something for this country rather than sending out this diatribe which is being broadcast all over the world. Everyone is listening to what is going on in Ireland because everyone wants to know whether they will get paid, whether we can be trusted and if we will pay them back in future if we borrow from them again. Thanks be to God the people had the foresight and knowledge not to put into Government people who would not repay anyone, who would run us into the ground and who, when everything was gone and the lights were turned off, would turn around and ask what they should do next.

I wish the Government well in its exploits, especially the Taoiseach, the Tánaiste, the Minister for Finance and the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform. We are in difficult times and it is about time some people in the Chamber put on the green jersey.

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